


Transient

by DarkrystalSky



Category: K (Anime)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Hallucinations, Mental Instability, Post-Canon, can you believe there's no character tag for Hieda
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-10-26 04:41:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10779771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkrystalSky/pseuds/DarkrystalSky
Summary: One year after the destruction of the Dresden Slate, the powerless Kings find themselves losing grip on reality as phantoms from the past threaten to destroy their peaceful lives. Can they rely on their faith in human abilities, or will they rush back to their powers like children to their mother’s arms?The Slate isangry.[DISCONTINUED - SORRY]





	1. Kairosclerosis

_**Kairosclerosis**. n. the moment you realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste._

* * *

_Weismann level FWHM values stable._

-

The professor’s hand swiftly danced on the tablet’s surface, his back to the room, his gaze down. Letters and formulas appeared enlarged on the giant screen projected in front of the students, as he wrote them down.

“The total Compton coefficient,  _sigma_ , for a free electron as determined by the Klein-Nishina formula varies  with the photon energy…”

A cellphone started ringing. The corner of his smile twitched imperceptibly, as he had emphasised several times to the students, he did not want cellphones and PDAs on during his  lectures.

He patiently ignored the noise and proceeded, drawing a graph on a side of the screen. “Notice this: the curves for carbon and argon…”

The phone rang again, louder. Someone whispered something. The teacher slowly turned around to face the classroom, scanning the lines of students, attempting to keep a serious but dignified expression.

_Kuroh was very strict on this: he had to appear stern to the students, unmovable, otherwise they’d dub him as an idiot and barely pay attention to his (already too advanced) lectures._

His eyes scanned the room, following the noise and finally fell on the culprit: his very teaching post.

“Whoops, sorry it’s mine!” he broke out of the ‘serious’ mode he forced himself into and literally threw the PDA on the table, rushing for his own phone.

Several students sighed.

_So far, he wasn’t going very well._

“I’m sorry, I thought I left it at home!” he laughed nervously, fumbling to turn the device off. His eyes briefly fell on the screen and he halted immediately.

“I’m sorry, I’ve got to get this…” he murmured absentmindedly, backing towards the exit. He smiled apologetically one last time to the students  before slipping out of the door.

“Reisi, it’s been a while!” the man cheerfully greeted the man on the other side of the phone.

No answer came from the speaker but a static, constant, noise.

“Reisi?” he repeated, as he received no answer. “Munakata- _san_ ?”

A sudden, high-pitched noise prompted the man to instinctively hurl the phone away from him. The device slammed against the classroom door just moments before a student came out to check on him.

“Everything alright, Professor German?” the student asked, using the nickname the whole school started to use once it was clear that the teacher didn’t really mind.

“…Uh, yeah, no worries.” He replied after a moment of confusion. Slowly he picked up the phone, which appeared to have turned off after he had tossed it away. Was that a prank? He was pretty certain it was the SCEPTER 4 office number that had appeared on the screen, and they weren’t exactly the types to orchestrate a similar prank. Absentmindedly, he turned the device in his hands before putting it away in a pocket of the coat.

“Where were we?” he asked the classroom with a broad smile as he walked back into the room.

-

It wasn’t going to snow this year, and she didn’t need clairvoyance to confirm that suspicion. Anna raised her eyes to the clear January sky, as her classmates ran all around her.

She was rather enjoying middle school, as her first public school experience. Nobody really bullied or bothered her as her clansmen feared, but nobody got really close to her either, probably due to the fact that every day a different gangster-looking guy walked her to the school gates. There was nothing she could do about HOMRAs’ protectiveness, but she had managed to win the argument and win her right to go back home on her own.

Quietly, she averted her eyes from the sky and tightened the scarf knot around her neck before leaving the school grounds.

She was cold.

Especially for those who once wielded the power of fire, the hardest thing to get used to was the absence of the warmth that had slowly faded away during the last year. Both her powers of pyrokinesis and clairvoyance were completely gone by now, but she didn’t miss them: she still had the warmth of the family HOMRA was for her. Surely she had the weirdest family among all her peers: she was looking forward to witness her classmates’ reactions on Bring Your Parents To School Day.

Her phone suddenly rang.

Anna huffed in sign of protest. This was usually Yata or Kusanagi checking on her after school hours, despite her frequent protests.

The three kanjis on her phone begged to differ.

The name the Silver Clan adopted for themselves never failed to make her smile, but she had to admit it was appropriate for the small group who had decided to make a school campus their own home.

“Yes? Shiro?” she replied, only to be answered by a static-y noise that immediately prompted her to take the phone away from her ear, staring once again at the screen, that stubbornly still displayed the name White Rice Party. The piercing noise startled her, despite not ringing close to her ear, and she pressed the button to interrupt the call, to no avail. The noise stopped on its own a few seconds later, and the phone turned itself off on its own, leaving a puzzled Anna standing in front of the school gates, with only a faint ring in her ears.

What was that about? A mistake in the lines? For some reason she couldn’t help to feel uneasy, but she didn’t want to appear worried over something so insignificant. She was going to keep it to herself for the time being, after all, she could always trust her clansmen.

-

“Seriously, you have your own dorms.”

“Yes but you cook like a chef.”

“Kuromaru’s cooking is the best!”

“Plus, the professor said we can always come here to eat!”

Yatogami Kuroh was not the jealous type.

Admittedly, he missed the times when it had been just the three of them around the tea table, peacefully enjoying their time together. But a few months after Shiro had begun teaching at Ashinaka Academy, their dorm room had become increasingly crowded at dinnertime.

Yukizome Kukuri had admittedly been an honorary member of the White Rice Party since the very beginning, even if she didn’t know. The release of the Slate’s power, dubbed to the public as “‘simultaneous global-scale mass psychic abilities activation incidents”, left her with a mild control of gravity akin to the one their clan had, and Shiro had been helping her control it until it had slowly faded away during the past year. The girl wasn’t a student at Ashinaka anymore, having started going to an University on the mainland, but that didn’t stop her from visiting from time to time.

It was the other two that bugged Kuroh all the time.

The first was Hieda Tooru, the original owner of the body the Colorless King had hijacked when he approached the Silver King almost three years before, as well as the one who had hosted Shiro’s soul and powers for almost a year. It was still weird to see the two of them interact sometimes. The boy had a very quiet, reserved demeanour, but had been very determined when he had demanded to know what had happened to him in those 15 months he could not remember. They had explained everything to him, and offered a place at their table. This didn’t stop him to be  _incredibly petty_ sometimes.

Like when he had invited half of his classroom to meet them, abusing their popularity in a way that they never could have guessed. Even Neko had come out of that meeting quite shocked, having a dozen of guys ask her all kind of personal questions and trying to get close to her. Shiro had found her hidden in an old shed, Hieda apologized and all was well, but Kuroh still kept an eye on the sketchy teen.

Nobody expected Tsukino Kurumi. Apparently she was a gym teacher at Ashinaka, whom they had met a few days after Shiro had been hired as a teacher. She had stared at him for a good hour before shouting across the hallway “Adi- _san_ ?!”. It turned out she had met him a few years prior, as he was soaring the sky in the airship  _Himmelreich_ . He saw her on the ship’s screens and decided to pick her up to have tea together and chat a little bit, since she had ‘looked somewhat sad’ to him. “Creepy” Kuroh had commented, partly mirroring Shiro’s reaction at his own haiku recorder.

Truly, the clansman did not expect the man who claimed to have been estranged from the world for 70 years to have had the habit to randomly pick up people to chat. Although it was obvious when he thought about it that he must have done so out of loneliness.

Now what was going on in Shiro’s life was anything but lonely, and despite the small crowd that had formed in their room, Kuroh enjoyed their relatively peaceful life.

With a sound click, the door to the kitchen opened.

“You’re late!” Kuroh smirked at the man who walked in.

The teacher smiled apologetically, “I had some business to take care on.”

“Shiro’s back!” the fourth person at the table, Miyabi Ameno -commonly known as Neko- jumped over the tea table and rushed to the entrance to hug the newcomer.

“Hello, Adi- _san._ ” Tsukino called.

“Professor” Kukuri bowed slightly.

“Weismann.” Hieda said politely.

Adolf K. Weismann, a.k.a. Isana Yashiro, formerly the First and Silver King of the Dresden Slate, now English and Physics teacher at Ashinaka’s High School, man of many names and secrets, walked into the room.

Most of those secrets had little importance now, as they lived a private, peaceful life on the school island.

Shiro smiled at the people he more or less considered his family.

“I’m home.”

-

_Warning._

_Weismann level FWHM values falling. Mean peak is 7% of maximum value._

* * *

**[Tsukino Kurumi (月乃 くるみ) is a fan-name for a canon unnamed character who appeared in the short story Sky Whale by Furuhashi Hideyuki.]**


	2. Kudoclasm

_We’re all afraid to let go, of falling into a bottomless future. But maybe we belong in the air, tumbling in the wind. Maybe it’s only when you dive in that you pick up enough speed to shape the flow of reality, and choose your own course, flying not too high, and not too low, but gliding from one to the other in long playful loops._

* * *

During the last two weeks, at the governmental organization SCEPTER 4, life had become incredibly  _boring_ . Fushimi Saruhiko was balancing himself on the back legs of his chair, staring at the ceiling with an empty expression. A few blue clansmen had even begun playing MahJong among themselves.

Since the last residual level of power emanated by the Dresden Slate, quantified as Weismann Level, had fallen to zero, rogue superpowers incidents and Strains had completely disappeared, leaving them effectively jobless. Fushimi predicted that the Government would shut down SCEPTER 4 in a few months, finding another job afterwards was going to be annoying as hell.

“Nope” he  fell forward, the front legs of the chair thudding loudly on the floor. Most of his colleagues in the room turned towards him. He chose to ignore that.

“If I stay here one more minute I’m gonna break something. Call me if there’s an emergency, will you?” he asked at no one in particular.

“Where are you going?” a young man with reddish orange hair, the blue clansman Andy Doumyouji, called him just moments before Fushimi left the room. The latter clicked his tongue in annoyance and glanced outside the window: it was already sundown.

“I think I’m gonna get a drink” he remained vague.

“Oh, HOMRA then” Doumyouji replied, throwing subtlety directly out of the window. “I’m coming too!”

“Obviously” Fushimi muttered between his teeth, but he didn’t protest further when his colleague caught up to him and walked out along.

A long moment of silence passed in the room before someone said: “No one even  _tried_ to stop them?”

-

Shiro’s cellphone started ringing as they were finishing putting away the bowls and plates that had been used at dinner. It was only him, Kuroh and Neko in the room at the moment, as the other three had already returned to their own rooms. Actually, Neko owned her own dorm room now as well, as she was officially an Ashinaka student now, but she rarely used it, preferring to sleep at Shiro’s side instead. At the moment, Neko, tired and full, was dozing on the bed, hugging a pillow, looking up from time to time at the two of them.

“You’re not answering?” Kuroh’s head poked out of the kitchenette to look into the room. The other man had his phone in hand but instead of answering he simply stared at the screen.

It displayed the former Red King, Anna’s name. It was the second time that day a former King appeared to call him after a silence of months, and he had his doubts about the nature of the call.

Kuroh seemed to notice his weird tension but did not press for information, simply waiting for something to happen.

Finally, Shiro answered the call, but didn’t put the phone to his ear.

“Anna?” He called with a faint smile.

“Shiro- _san_ .”

With a loud sigh, the man visibly relaxed, finally putting the device to his ear. “It’s been awhile,  _Mädchen_ . How is school?”

Neko crawled down of the bed and leaned on Shiro’s back: “Is it the red girl? Neko says hello!”

“She says hello too.” Shiro smiled at the girl, before listening in to some other piece of conversation.

“No, no I didn’t,” he replied, suddenly serious. “When did this happen?”

Silence. Nod. Kuroh glanced at them again, curious about the discussion and the whole situation.

“Actually...” Shiro started, but didn’t finish the sentence. He wasn’t expecting Kuroh to be looking at him when he turned around, from his surprised expression. With a smile, he covered briefly the phone with his hand and smiled at the other boy: “Listen, can you take Neko to her room? I need a moment.”

Kuroh feared this was gonna be the case. He sighed and raised the lithe girl from the floor, a hand under her knees.

“No! I wanna stay with Shiro.” She weakly protested with a big yawn.

“Another time, stupid cat.”

Shiro waited for the door to close to reprise his conversation.

“You don’t trust your clansmen?” Anna’s question was direct to the point.

“Ahah, that’s not the case, I just don’t want to stress them over something so insignificant!” he replied sheepishly. “You know Kuro, he’d pull an Elephant out of a Fly.”

Anna’s stunned silence before her quiet laugh made the man smile.

“A  _what_ ?” she giggled finally.

“ _Aus einder Mücke einen Elefanten machen_ . You don’t say that here? Oh, sorry” he laughed as well. It was nice to talk with the fierce leader of the red clan, why did they even stop reaching out to each other, he wondered. “It means to blow something small out of proportion.”

“I had an inkling. But Shiro- _san_ , you were about to say something…”

“Yeah,” collecting his thoughts, even if he was alone, he straightened his back before answering. “I actually experienced something similar earlier, around the same time. It was Munakata’s number but the noise you described came out of the speakers instead.”

Anna’s silence was kinda heavy this time, he waited patiently for an answer.

“Do you think it means something?” she wondered quietly.

The man shrugged: “I’m at loss with technology, I’m afraid. I hope it’s just some kind of mistake in the lines. If you want, I can check at SCEPTER 4 tomorrow if something similar happened to Reisi.”

Shiro heard a faint ring on Anna’s side.

“It probably would be wise not to underestimate it” she replied, and he could almost hear in her tone that a smile had appeared on the girl’s lips. “We should go tonight, I’ll wait for you at HOMRA.”

“On it,  _Mädchen_ ! See you later!” he exclaimed, standing up just as Kuroh walked back into the room.

“Neko’s asleep in her own bed. Should I leave the door...where are you going?” he inquired immediately as he saw the man putting his coat on, ready to go out.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m going to the city for a while, nothing serious, just formalities.”

“Do I need to accompany you?” the boy asked, glancing at the cabinet where his treasured sword Kotowari was hidden. There had been no need for the sword to be used in months, and finally Kuroh stopped bringing it with him everywhere he went.

“Nope” Shiro laughed, “It’s alright. You won’t even notice that I’m gone.”

-

“Here you go: Cosmopolitan and...” Izumo Kusanagi held his breath, balancing carefully the shot glass on the two chopsticks, “Sake Bomb.”

“Yay!” Andy exclaimed raising a fist to the air.

Fushimi grabbed his cocktail glass from the counter just a moment before his colleague slammed his fist on the counter at the shout of “ _Kampai_ !”

The shot of sake fell from the precarious position into the beer glass, some HOMRA members and casual customers cheered, while Fushimi grimaced, pulling back to avoid drops of beer on his clothes. He sympathetically glanced at Kusanagi, who mostly feared for the old wood counter’s integrity.

It completely baffled him how the half-French enthusiastic agent had managed to become so friendly with the members of HOMRA.

“So the two of you are off work early?” Kusanagi wondered, as he cleaned the counter after the mess Andy made.

“Technically no, but there’s no much to do, so they let us come here!” Andy sipped the warm foam that the mixture in his glass created.

Fushimi glared up but didn’t add anything. He had hoped Yata would be at the bar, some banter or fight would have helped to ease the boredom, but the red-haired boy didn’t seem to be around, he was probably working and at that point it was pointless to try and track him down.

Anna sat quietly on her sofa, glancing at the bar door whenever it opened. Fushimi wondered who she was expecting so he started glancing at the door every time the small bell rang as well. It didn’t take long for his question to be answered, as a man clad in white stepped into the bar.

“Oh, that’s a surprise,” Kusanagi smiled at the newcomer, “ _Willkommen zurück, herr Weismann_ . The usual?”

A soft, childish laugh left no doubt about the newcomer’s identity: “Shut uup, I wish you would drop the formalities, after all this time.  _Herr Weismann_ is so stuffy  _and old_ , just call me Shiro like you’ve always done. And I’m only picking up Anna, for today.”

Fushimi grimaced and clicked his tongue in annoyance. He had found the former Silver King annoying when he was wearing the robes of a smug, uncanny high school student, but it was even worse now that he was back in his original body, his youthful face permanently fixed in that all-knowing smile. Despite the appearances, the guy was in his 90s, it was really creepy once you realized it. Was Anna waiting for him? Apparently yes, as she stood up and walked towards him.

“You should come by more often. Are you sure you don’t want anything to drink?”

“I’m supposed to work tomorrow, maybe next time” he replied, as Anna grabbed his sleeve and pulled him outside.

“When did he become so buddy-buddy with Anna anyway?” Fushimi muttered as the two had walked out.

“Dunno. Anna is her own person, almost 14 now.” He told him proudly.

“Please, don’t go into dad mode now.” The younger man moaned, gulping down the rest of the cocktail and walking towards the door.

“Leaving already?”

Despite wanting to meet Yata, the young man would have lied if he said he wasn’t interested in the discussion and possible destination of the two former Kings that had just left the bar. He also had a very strong hunch about the aforementioned destination.

Without a word of answer, he slipped out of the building, walking fast in a specific direction. As he thought, the two of them were heading towards SCEPTER 4’s main building. Was something new up? The young man couldn’t help but grin as he followed the two at a safe distance.

-

“I apologize for the dreadful state you found us in” Awashima Seri, Lieutenant and Second in Command to SCEPTER 4, bowed deeply to the two of them after she had brought them into one of the inner corridors of the building.

The blue clansmen had been in the process of avoiding boredom in any way that came to mind, when Shiro and Anna walked into the control room. It was safe to say the most normal thing was one man playing Galaga on his terminal.

“Fact is, without any more Strain accidents or super powers in general, the existence of this organization is quickly becoming obsolete” the woman sighed as she guided them through the corridors.

“Can you blame them for looking for distractions, then?” Shiro asked lightly.

“They should have at least taken example from our captain and kept presentable.”

Anna yawned and pulled on Shiro’s coat.

“I know, it’s very late, I’m sorry. Let’s meet Munakata and go to sleep, alright?”

The girl nodded.

Awashima stopped in front of the main office door and knocked. As no answer came, the woman slowly opened the door and took a peek inside, only to immediately fall back and slam the door closed.

“I’m sorry, excuse me a minute” she blurted out as she opened the door again, just slightly, enough for her to slip inside and close it again. The two left in the corridor looked at each other in silence.

“A free drink he was doing something embarrassing as well” Anna broke the silence.

“A free bento from Kuro he was sleeping” Shiro nodded.

“Done.”

“Done.”

After another second of silence, both of them smiled and rushed to open the door.

-

Officially designed as the Captain and Director of Tokyo Legal Affairs Bureau, Civil Registry Department, Annex 4, Reisi Munakata at 26 years old had suddenly found himself with a lot of free time on his hands.

When the door to his office burst open, the room was filled to the brim with books and documents, other than puzzle pieces and various opened board games. The two people who rushed in were familiar enough for him not to be taken by surprise by their appearance.

“Sorry for the mess. Silver King Adolf K. Weismann, Red King Kushina Anna, what brings you here?” he greeted them, polite and calm, presenting himself as the very image of order, in contrast with his surroundings.

It was Anna, former Red King, who composed herself first. The young girl, who was barely starting to develop as a woman but had already started showing a startling beauty along with her fierce demeanour, was cherished by all clans even now that her power had disappeared.

“A simple question, Blue King Reisi Munakata.” She started, as formal as he had been. “Did you today, around 5pm received by any chance a phone call by me?”

“Wouldn’t you know?” Munakata asked instead, his eyebrow raised.

Neither of them answered, clearly waiting for his answer to the first question.

“I received no such phone call, but if you have something to say I’ll listen.” Munakata finally sighed.

Anna’s expression showed a hint of distrust, but when the Silver King explained about the two mysterious calls and sounds, he didn’t sound as distraught as the girl had been, almost as if he already chose to disregard the abnormal event.

_The leopard cannot change its spots_ , _after all_ .

Even as he offered to put a surveillance record on their phones and check for the source of the noise, the man shook his head and denied, dragging Anna away with the excuse that it was way past the girl’s bedtime.

Only when the two of them had actually left the building, Lieutenant Awashima, who had remained by his side in the office, turned towards him.

“You didn’t tell them” she noted, with a light note of accusation.

“If they really wanted to know, they’d know” with a flick of his hand he made the holographic screen of his computer appear. On it, a radar map superimposed to the city showed several points of light gradually getting brighter, a series of numbers and a sentence blinking in red.

_Weismann level FWHM values falling. Mean peak is 19% of maximum value._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Initial quote from John Koenig's Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.


	3. Kalopsia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anna tries to make friends. Fushimi makes a discovery. Shiro is a little shit.
> 
> The dead come back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _n. condition wherein things appear more beautiful than they are_

“Hey, you’re Anna- _chan_ , right?”

Anna sleepily raised her head. She went to bed really late, due to her excursus to SCEPTER 4 and what ensued later, and she struggled to stay awake during morning lessons. She didn’t expect at lunchtime to be approached by three girls roughly her age, who now stood in front of her desk. As she looked up and rubbed her eyes, she recognized one of them as her classmate, a pretty brunette with a bob cut and rosy cheeks. The other two were complete strangers, although by the school uniform they wore they were probably from the same class. They also looked similar enough to be sisters, with the same long brown hair one had styled in a braid, the other in two pigtails.

“Yes?” Anna answered hesitantly, it was the first time, after the first day of school, that someone from her class approached her of their own volition.

“How cute!” the first of the two strangers shrieked, holding hands with the other one.

“How really cute!” the second one echoed her.

Anna backed away just a little.

“She looks and sounds just like a doll!” the girls continued. The girl with a bob cut made a gesture with her hand as if to silence them. That, Anna recognized: the girl in her class had a position of power over the other two.

“I’m Minamoto Kamiko, these are Yuna” she introduced the braided-hair one.

“And Hina!” the pigtails one exclaimed.

“I’m Anna” the girl quietly introduced herself, still wary of the girl’s intention.

Kamiko smiled warmly, sitting in front of her: “You’re always alone, don’t you know anyone?”

Anna blushed, not knowing how to reply.

“Oh, sorry! That was inconsiderate of me!” she sounded very regretful as she said so. “What I meant to say is: why don’t you spend a bit of time with us?”

Growing up, Anna had always been estranged by people her age by her powers. This, she realized, was actually the first time nothing was in the way of her pursuing a normal relationship. She knew absolutely nothing about how to relate to other girls, but maybe she could learn and, well, if she didn’t feel comfortable she had her family, HOMRA, outside of school.

“I guess so?” she answered with a small smile.

-

The lunchtime bell music rang through the hallways, indicating the end of lectures. Shiro turned off his tablet and took out his chopsticks: before opening Kuroh’s bento, it would be a waste not to try what everyone else had brought with them.

“Here it goes, with the chopsticks…” a student sighed.

“Nope!” a boy sitting on the back of the classroom literally jumped out of his seat and ran outside the classroom with the exclamation of: “Not today too, you damn German!”

The scene caused hilarity in most of the students and the teacher himself. His students had learned very fast how to deal with the eccentric professor in their own way. Most enjoyed offering samples of their dishes in Shiro’s “bento hunt” as Neko had dubbed his habit.

“I made this myself, Professor!”

“Mr. German! Try my mom’s  _karaage_ !”

“Do you like eel?”

Shiro just grinned as he approached the students. In that moment, in the corner of his eye he saw a familiar figure walk into the classroom.

“Oh! Tooru- _kun_ !” He turned around, greeting the white-haired teen. His expression was unusually blank as he slowly turned to face the teacher.

“Tooru?”

“Professor, who are you talking to?” a female student wondered. Shiro turned towards her for a moment and when he faced Tooru Hieda once again, the boy had seemingly undergone a transformation: a twisted grin was warping his face and he was pointing a gun at him.

The gunshot echoed loudly and Shiro fell back, pain blossoming in his chest.

As he touched ground, though, he quickly discovered his clothes were still clean and intact, no wound visible, the phantom pain quickly melting away.

And Tooru had disappeared completely.

Several students, worried, ran towards him, asking him if he was well and what happened. One even suggested him to visit the infirmary.

“I’m fine…” Shiro sighed in the end, standing up and brushing the dust from his coat.

_“You sure are having fun_ .” A familiar yet distorted voice rang painfully in his head together with a background ringing.

“I need a moment…” Frowning, Shiro stepped back, grabbed his things and walked outside the classroom, leaving the students, who were already readying for the taste test, stunned and surprised.

The hallways were quickly crowding, as the students left the classrooms to take a walk or go to the cafeteria. Shiro waltzed through the students and cleaning robots, directed towards the stairs to the rooftop.

_“You can’t get used to it.”_

Shiro squeezed his eyes to fight the piercing headaches.

Where did the voice came from? It was certainly not real, some kind of auditory allucination, but it was certainly familiar, although he couldn’t place it.

_“How_ small _they look.”_

The man stopped as he was about to climb the stairs, a couple of students walking down spared him a quick worried glance before moving on past him. Suddenly, he started walking again, climbing the steps two at a time until he got to the rooftop door. Warm sunlight and the crisp December air seemed to wake him up from a trance as he blinked several time to assess his surroundings.

It had been a long time since he last came up here: he used to whenever he wanted to be alone, and it had been a while since he felt such a need.

Shiro closed his eyes and inhaled slowly, clearing his mind. What had just happened? If he didn’t know better he’d say he just had a severe hallucination. Actually quite severe, as he had to check twice he wasn’t really injured: he was unharmed but this confirmation came together along with a painfully familiar uneasiness that had settled deep in his chest. He was almost afraid to reach out for it to confirm his fear.

“Professor?”

Shiro froze, the voice sounded much more close this time, as if it came from someplace next to him. He slowly turned around to meet wide amber eyes staring at him.

Tooru Hieda, cross-legged and holding an half-eaten melon pan, stared back.

“Everything all right?” the boy insisted, eyeing the older man with a perplexed expression.

It took Shiro a few seconds to realize this time the person in front of him was the real Tooru and not some kind of weird hallucination. It also took him several seconds to realize the boy was eating on his own on the school rooftop.

“What are you doing here?”

Tooru winced, avoiding the man’s gaze and nibbling at his snack: “I wanted to eat someplace quiet.”

Shiro slowly sat beside him: “Something wrong?”

The boy shrugged: “Not really. Class can be a little overwhelming sometimes, that’s all.”

“You don’t like it?”

“I love it!” Tooru was quickly to correct him, “I can never thank you enough for allowing me to enroll and I swear I’m gonna pay the fees back once I graduate and find a…”

“Woah, woah, slow down!” Shiro laughed at the torrent of words. “I’ve got an income from like a ton of patents, money’s totally not an issue.”

“Ok…” the boy slowly said, taken aback by the weird answer. “It’s fine anyway, it’s just that I need some  _me_ time. Especially with Ameno- _san_ around…”

“What has Neko done?”

“Nothing in particular. She’s just being...herself. I can only take enough of her antics every day,” he sighed, “and I wish she would call me by my name sometimes.”

So  _that_ was the issue. Shiro was well too familiar with it. “I’ll talk to her about it. I’m sorry.”

The boy nodded and resumed eating his snack.

Shiro closed his eyes and relaxed, the weird events of few minutes before still ominously nagging in the back of his mind.

“Why did  _you_ come here, anyway?” Tooru started again once he’d finished eating.

“I guess I needed some  _me_ time as well.”

“You?”

Shiro opened his eyes and blinked to get adjusted to the light. “You sound surprised.”

“I had you figured for a people person…” the boy admitted. “Everybody likes you and you get along with everyone easily. I’m kinda jealous.”

The man burst out laughing. “Is that why you invited your class at my place?”

Tooru blushed: “Kinda…” he replied, sheepishly, “I guess I wanted to see what’s it like to be popular. Sorry for that…”

“Maybe it’s not me you should apologize to.”

“Yeah, but Yatogami- _san_ is kinda scary…”

“I didn’t mean Kuroh, although you’re right, he can be quite scary…”

Talking with the boy was incredibly calming and relaxing, Shiro found out. It allowed him to think clearly and focus better on the matter at hand.

From a scientific viewpoint what he just experienced could have been described as a multi-sensory hallucination, although he never experienced any of those and his current state of health did not justify it in any way, it would have been unwise to ignore it.

First of all, he had to make sure he was with someone all the time.  _Which, in hindsight, showed how bad an idea coming to the rooftop was_ .

“Tooru, can I borrow your phone?”

The boy glanced at him before handing him his school-issued PDA, warily. “Whatever happened to yours?” He asked, but Shiro had already dialed a number he knew at heart and he simply smiled as he waited for the other person to answer.

“Kuro ~” he called lightly once he heard the click of an answered call. “Can you pick me up after school? Let’s go somewhere, I have no work tomorrow. Uh? Oh, it’s Tooru’s. It’s still at SCEPTER 4. Reasons. Yup, reasons! Nope, nothing to worry about.  _Leave the sword home, Kuroh_ .”

Tooru giggled, as he could only imagine the other half of the conversation being Kuroh being the usual overdramatic worrywart he was whenever he had to deal with the eccentric professor.

-

Just minutes before the opening time, Anna had called to say she was going to a classmate’s house for dinner.

The HOMRA members who had overheard her phone call to Kusanagi had completely lost it.

“But a girl-friend or a boy-friend?”

“A boyfriend?!” Yata had screamed, leaning on the counter.

“She would have told us if she got one, right?”

The more time passed, the more Kusanagi felt like the only adult in the bunch. He put his phone back and grabbed a rag to polish the wood counter.

“You guys are the reason it took a year for Anna to go to a friend’s house. And for your information, she’s called Kamiko, so most definitely a girl.” He could swear that the sigh of relief was almost visible. The barman glanced at a photograph stuck to the board on the side of the room.

“If you were here, you’d be begging me to follow her…” he murmured, a whisper inaudible by the other people in the bar. “No, screw that, you’d probably follow her immediately, both of you.”

The former red clansmen were already settling down. It was almost time for Yata to go to work: he had made himself known as the fastest bellhop in Shizume Town, almost flying on his skateboard to deliver any kind of package. Fushimi had designed the app who allowed him to manage the job, not without remarking he would quit in a few weeks. Yata had taken that as a challenge and instead settled as doing his very best.

Everyone took Yata’s job, along with Anna’s school enrollment as the first signs towards a life of normalcy, a transition from a gang to a family.

Everything was going to be alright, Kusanagi told himself, trying his best to ignore the unsettling feeling that Anna and Shiro’s brief visit to SCEPTER 4 triggered.

-

“What is that? Found something interesting?”

Fushimi didn’t even bother looking up from his terminal as one of his colleagues approached him. He had been working all day with the telephone the idiotic Silver King had left him, when he had approached them as they left SCEPTER 4’s headquarters.

_“I have a feeling Munakata’s hiding something, can you take a look?”_

_Fushimi had looked at Shiro’s hand, holding a simple phone in front of him._

_“He is my captain, you know that?”_

_“I bet you’re as curious as me about the meaning of this, though” the man had smiled “It’s a non-zero sum game”._

He seriously hoped people would stop assuming things about him. Anyway, this time he’d been right: he’d been striving for action since the last Strain incident and a mysterious phenomenon that brought the Silver and Red King together was not to shrug off.

He’d been looking for a phone call that supposedly came from Scepter 4 around 17:00 the previous day, but found no trace of it on the normal lines, so he’d begun to delve into the mainframe and reconstruct the electromagnetic waves pattern over Ashinaka campus and Anna’s school. The result showed indeed two peaks of energy, almost lost in all the electromagnetic noise of the city, spiking at that exact same time, and at this point he was already in borderline illegal metaphorical waters.

“Let’s see if this has anything to do with the Greens…” he murmured absentmindedly as he pushed his own chair to reach another terminal and conduct a new research. During the past few agonizingly slow months, his only interesting job had been to keep an eye of the remnants of the Green Clan, and the JUNGLE apps that now became, under their supervision, quite innocuous.

JUNGLE, once used to manipulate civilians into aiding the Green Clan, was now nothing more than a glorified life planner, with his social network slowly emptying and games becoming unused. SCEPTER4 stopped tracking Mishakuji Yukari and Sukuna Gojo’s movements months before, as they weren’t likely to cause any more ruckus as they were now powerless, but Fushimi privately kept an eye on the two even as they left Shizume City.

As Fushimi, scrolled through the data record, he froze all of a sudden as his eyes fell on a certain graph. He abruptly stood up and walked to the main terminal: the bird eye’s view of the city, showed of the several screens, changed to a stylized map of the city. At this point several clansmen noticed Fushimi’s erratic behaviour and gathered to see what the ruckus was all about.

“What the fuck.” The young man, despite the unearthly sight in front of him, found himself grinning.

\- 

“Aww, you should have told me that you were going to make me a surprise!” Shiro teased Kuroh as they walked side by side in a narrow alley of the city.

“That kinda defies the purpose of a surprise, don’t you think?” Kuroh smiled a bit. “It took me a while to find a restaurant that serves  _that_ , it’s considered a true delicacy!”

“I know, I know!” Shiro happily clapped his hands.

It still baffled Kuroh how Shiro, no, Adolf K. Weismann, 92, German, was absolutely in love with all things Japanese, including their cuisine. So Kuroh, whose job during the last year had been literally nothing more than looking after his King and clansmen, had took an effort in tracking down chefs who could present dishes he could never make on his own.

“I should really look for a job,” he realized too late he had said it aloud.

Shiro shook his head: “Noo! You’re already the perfect housewife!” he laughed.

“That’s a little demeaning…” Kuroh grumbled, looking up at his King’s delighted expression. It was still weird, looking  _up_ . He had done his best to treat his King and friend the way he always had after he nonchalantly came back to the room they called home, but not as the teenager he had been when they first met, but as his true self, wearing a face Kuroh only remembered from the monochrome grainy photograph sitting on the desk. It was not a reveal, precisely, but more a connection he had never made between the boy he protected during the whole deal with the Colorless King and the King of Origins he only regarded as a somewhat legendary figure.

Kuroh’s train of thought was interrupted when Shiro suddenly pressed a finger to Kuroh’s nose with a small: “Boop.”

Kuroh instinctively pulled back.

“Don’t stare, please.” Shiro admonished him with a smile that had just a hint of sadness. “I thought we were past this?”

“We are...I am!” The younger man assured him, recomposing himself. “I was just thinking.”

“Right…”

“Oh, we’re here!” Kuroh exclaimed as a small diner made itself known at the end of the road.

“Yay! Sashimi!” Shiro exclaimed, rushing forward. Any trace of sadness gone from the man’s face. That, Kuroh noted, would never change.

As the two of them made their way into the restaurant, it was immediately obvious that even if the place was hidden in a side alley and quite small, it was very refined and elegant, everything was made of wood, with paper paintings at the wall. Kuroh sure had taste.

“Yatogami- _san_ ” an old man in a white apron greeted them. “And this must be your foreigner friend. Please, leave your coats at the entrance and have a seat.”

Another thing Shiro immediately noted, while taking off his coat, was that the restaurant was full of people, despite being relatively early. The old man had slipped behind the counter and began sharpening a couple of knives together, then cut extremely thin slices of a fish filet lying on his side of the table.

Shiro leaned on the counter to take a better look.

“Wow, it’s almost transparent!” he exclaimed as the old man artistically arranged the slices in a large circular plate, before presenting it to his guest.

“Abe- _san_ is one of the few chefs in Shizume certified to serve the tastiest part of  _fugu_ .” Kuroh joined his hands as he said “ _Itadakimasu_ .”

Shiro followed suit, grabbing one thin slice with the chopsticks and holding it against the dim light of a lantern: “You can see through!”

“Just eat it, you idiot!” Kuroh scolded him, as the chef served him a  _Kaisendon_ with several slices of different sashimi.

“You don’t…?”

“Don’t like fugu.” The boy admitted shyly, then started eating his own dish. “Master Ichigen had me try it once, the texture alone left me with a feeling akin to car sickness.”

“Well then!” Shiro digged in and for a while the two of them ate in silence.

Another couple of customers walked in and the chef welcomed them in the same way, having them sit at a table  not far away.

“If you want to look for a job it’s alright” Shiro broke the awkward silence first. “Just don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

“Actually,” Kuroh laid his chopsticks on the table in front of him, with a serious and determined expression. “There was something I wanted to ask”

Shiro didn’t reply but with a dumbfounded expression.

“I wanted to ask your permission to go back to Master Ichigen’s...my house for a while.”

Kuroh stared at him for a long time, waiting for an answer.

“Uh hando haheveh hu hant”

Kuroh’s stared at him, confused and taken aback, before Shiro apparently realized what he just said and brought a hand to his mouth: “Ho wehd, mah hongue iss numh…”

“Abe- _san_ ?!” Kuroh called, standing up, but the chef was nowhere to be seen. Several customers looked their way. The couple who had just sat down gave him a nonplussed glance and proceeded to ignore him.

“ssohei, huho…” Shiro tried to reassure him. As he stood up, though, he staggered and lost his balance. “Hon fee ho well…” he murmured as he leaned on the wall to support himself.

Abe walked back into the main room from the kitchen, holding a box full of live fish. Kuroh could see that the moment the old man’s eyes settled on Shiro, color completely drained from his face.

“SHIRO!” the boy ran to his King’s side just as the latter fell on the ground, and started shaking uncontrollably. The fish tank fell to the ground with a loud noise, as the chef frantically started looking for something. Some customers raised up, to take a better look at what the commotion was about. The couple kept staring, shocked but unable to do anything.

“Shiro, please, please hold on!” Kuroh called repeatedly to his friend as he turned him over just to find out

he

was

laughing.

“Your face…” Shiro managed to say between a fit of giggles and the other. “You’re always so serious, I had to…” as he looked up, though, the playful smile immediately vanished from his face. Kuroh was staring at him, tight-lipped and furious, with tears in his eyes. The chef, just understanding what had just happened, gave him a stern look and said something under his breath before retreating into the kitchen.

“Are you” Kuroh hissed between his teeth, “completely out of your mind?!” he completed the sentence almost shouting.

Shiro wasn’t sure he’d ever heard the boy raise his voice at him before.

“I’m...sorry” Shiro said, slowly. “That was too far…”

“Damn right it was.” was the only, cold, answer he received from Kuroh as he stood, straight up, without even helping Shiro on his feet back again.

“It was just a prank…” Shiro stood up and reached with his hand to his friend’s shoulder.

Kuroh backed away and, after a moment of silence, walked out of the shop’s door. Shiro stood there, his arm partially extended towards the place Kuroh had stood just moments before, a heavy feeling of dread settling deep into his chest.

Two unfinished dishes laid on the counter.

-

Kamiko’s room was akin to a princess’s, or at least, that’s what Anna had thought when she was welcomed in. For her, who had spent most of her life either in a simple apartment, an ominous hospital or the basement of bar HOMRA, it was nothing short of a dream.

Kamiko had laughed when she noticed the sparkle in Anna’s eyes.

“My mom gave me some makeup, do you want to try it?” the girl opened up a paper box that stood on a cabinet.

The evening started like that, with the girls messing around with make up, trying to look like grown-ups. Anna had felt just a little ridiculous: she had never worn makeup before and yet had no doubt she had been forced to be a grown up long before they even wanted to be. Still, she fell in love with the red lipstick they had her try: without her red dress, wearing only the black and blue school uniform, she had been feeling like the world had been deprived of the only color she could see. She stared at her own reflection for a long time, trying to remember what Mikoto’s red or even her own looked like. She’d never missed her aura before, the thought of not being past this made her shudder.

“What do you think, Anna- _chan_ ?” the girls called on her suddenly. The three of them were sitting on the monumental bed, chatting among themselves. When Anna was caught by surprise by their question, unable to answer, they started giggling.

“Momo or Ayumi?” Kamiko repeated. Anna had no idea what they were talking about.

“I don’t…” Anna started, but was immediately interrupted by Yuna who literally jumped down from the bed and slammed a magazine on her face.  
“They’re just the cutest idols ever? Or at least Momo is!”

“No, Ayumi is cuter!” Hina retorted, Kamiko smiled, as if she was enjoying the pointless banter between the two.

“I’m not much into idols…” Anna sheepishly admitted, earning two totally bewildered looks.

“What are you into, Anna- _chan_ ?” Kamiko asked, with a tone of genuine curiosity.

Yeah, what was she into? She had no proper hobby outside of watching her clansmen, listen to their stories and occasional banter. Anna remembered when Tatara once left her his camera and she had been filming her “date” with Mikoto just to have that camera broken in the end.

“I like stories” she said in the end.

“What? Like manga?” Yuna wondered.

Anna shook her head: “The stories people tell, their memories and experiences…what they do in their free time and what they love and cherish” she attempted to explain, just to meet the empty looks of the twins.

Suddenly Kamiko started giggling, followed suit by the other two girls.

“That’s creepy, Anna- _chan_ .” Kamiko finally said. “Stalking others is not an hobby!”

Anna clenched her fists: “That’s not stalking! I listen to people!”

That didn’t stop the girls, but instead made them laugh even harder.

“Creepy” Yuna repeated.

It was in that moment, Anna realized. She could try her best to fit in, to wear makeup and laugh together with those people but this wasn’t her place, this wasn’t her place.

With a calm smile, the girl stood up: “I’m going home” she announced, heading towards the door.

“Where? That raggedy cafe?”

Anna froze, her hand on the door’s handle.

“Do you think my parents would have let me invite a random girl without knowing where she came from?” Kamiko asked, any sign of kindness vanished from her tone, leaving just cold hubris in her words. “Come sit down, Anna- _chan_ , we had just started to have fun.”

Anna slowly walked back to her chair, keeping her eyes fixed in Kamiko’s.

“I’ll be honest: I really want us to be friends, Anna, so there’s no need to look at me like that.”

“Why?”

“You’re pretty, refined. If I didn’t know you were raised by a bunch of hoodlums I would never guess. You’re suited for my company: that’s what mama said.” Kamiko announced, spewing those lines as if she learned them at heart.

Anna grimaced: how dare she demean like that her family?

“ _Burn her._ ”

Anna jolted with shock at the familiar voice that said those words.

On the further corner of the room, stood a figure that totally didn’t belong there. A tall man with red hair, smoking a cigarette,  _Mikoto Suoh_ .

Anna shut her eyes: what was that? An allucination? A figment of imagination? As Kamiko kept speaking, Anna didn’t pay attention to her words anymore, as she was focusing trying to cast away that allucination.

There was no way that image was actually Mikoto, even though her memory raced a year back, when she realized her role as the Red King. She’d seen Mikoto and Tatara as if they were there with her.

“ _Why did you let go of your red?_ ”

Even though her eyelids were shut, the voice still came to her as clear as if the man was right in front of her. She could even smell the cigarette smoke.

“What do you want from me?” Anna said out loud.

“Be nice to me, first” Kamiko’s answer brought her back to earth. “We can start by acting as friends then maybe we’ll actually…”

“ _You don’t deserve to be treated like this_ , _you’re the Red King, Anna_ ”

_I lost that red of yours, Mikoto._ Anna said in her head.

“ _You didn’t. You just let it go._ ”

As these words were spoken, Anna felt a familiar warmth rising from her own chest, like the hum of the earth before an eruption. Relaxing her muscles, she focused and reached for that feeling deep inside of herself until she felt completely enveloped by that warmth.

“I can see it again,” Anna opened her eyes to see the three girls looking at her with a mix of awe and shock. “Our red, Mikoto.”

-

Kusanagi froze suddenly while opening a bottle of vermouth, behind the colored lenses his eyes widened. For a minute there was no change in the bar, then Chitose, who was helping with the tables, dropped both the note with the orders from his hands and the cigarette from his mouth. Eric, chilling on one of the sofas, jumped on his feet, immediately looking at the barman.

“Anna” Kusanagi said, and the two of them, apologizing to the customers, immediately rushed outside. Kusanagi followed suit.

Against the night sky, not far away in the city, shone the light of a conflagration that shook the winter air, smoke and ash rose in the sky as the three could only watch, hoping there was no relationship between the explosion and the tug each of them had just felt at the very bottom of their being.

-

_Weismann level FWHM dropping. Mean peak value is 58%...60%...66%. Reaching singular point._

-

“I see. It wasn’t over yet, was it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name Minamoto Kamiko , (源上子) was carefully crafted by a friend of mine who’s really helping me with this fanfiction with her knowledge of all things Japan.


	4. Kenopsia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _**Kenopsia** n. the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet—a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgrounds—an emotional afterimage that makes it seem not just empty but hyper-empty, with a total population in the negative, who are so conspicuously absent they glow like neon signs._

* * *

Shiro opened his eyes slowly, groggily wondering why the alarm didn’t go off or why Kuroh hadn’t called him out of bed already before remembering. It wasn’t a school day. And Kuroh wasn’t home.

The room was empty as Shiro looked around. Not a single thing was out of place, meaning that for once Neko had spent the whole night in her own dorm room.

An handwritten note was sitting on the tea table. Shiro made an effort to drag himself out of bed and reach for the paper. 

_As I said_ , the words on paper read,  _I’ll be in the countryside for a few days. There’s a few ready bento boxes in the fridge, don’t microwave the yellow ones. Yatogami Kuroh._

Shiro let himself collapse on the tatami, then crawled back into bed and rolled in the covers and went back to sleep.

He woke up again once or twice during the day, simply looking at the clock to assess the time, before dozing off again. During the 70 years he spent, secluded on the  _Himmelreich_ , it wasn’t unusual to him to sleep through days or weeks even, but he hadn’t had the chance since he lived with his clansmen. Still, even though that wasn’t an habit he exactly missed, that day he simply couldn’t find the strength or motivation to completely wake up. Until he was actually forced out of bed, at mid-afternoon, as Neko barged into the room and literally jumped on top of him.

“Shiro! You sleepyhead!” she thrilled, kneading the covers and forcing him to sit up. “I was waiting for you all day!” she complained loudly.

“There’s no lessons today” he groggily replied with a yawn.

“There’s still the preparations for the School Festival! The other Shiro was worried since you didn’t show up and Kuroh didn’t show up and then Colored Glasses came looking for you and I came here and you were still sleeping, stupid Shiro!”

Wait.

What was that.

“Kusanagi?”

Neko vigorously nodded, although hyped as usual, she seemed weirdly down when he took a better look at her.

“What happened?” he asked again, now fully awake.

* * *

Kuroh had forgotten how quiet life in the countryside was. In Shizume there had always been music blaring anywhere, people talking, cars and vehicles to contribute to the constant cacophony of the city. Even the school campus - while relatively more peaceful - was still extremely lively in comparison.

Here, where large traditional houses were the only constructions visible among several hectares of cultivated fields, the only noise was the wind and sometimes a bird call.

“ _Chirp chirp / Even the smallest bird / Makes noise_ ”

Kuroh smiled and nodded at the kind voice coming from his recorder, before walking up the crooked dirt road, looking straight ahead. Ichigen Miwa’s poems had long stopped making sense related to the precise moment: the past Colorless King’s powers of foresight reached its limit after all, but the boy still enjoyed listening to them from time to time. The peaceful surroundings were already contributing on relaxing and calming down his anger. He still couldn’t believe Shiro had made him believe he was dying. Sure, he’d gone pretty far in the past, as far as pretending to have a little sister to shoot fireworks in his face once, but that was when they weren’t friends or even allies -and Kuroh  _was_ trying to kill him-. Even if he knew he couldn’t stay angry at him forever, he still needed some time to himself.

Although Ichigen left him his house, Kuroh had never come back since he left to look for the new Colorless King on the path that would in the end lead him to Shiro and his new Clan. It had only been a little over two years and yet it felt like an eternity had passed, as so many things had happened and changed.

The path zigzagged up a hill, as the vegetation thickened: the house shouldn’t be too far now, his thoughts were confirmed by a thin line of smoke rising from the tree tops.

Wait.

What.

Kuroh remembered asking an old lady who lived nearby to open the doors to make air circulate, from time to time, but why would she light a fire? And if she didn’t then who the hell was living in Master Ichigen’s house. Kuroh ran uphill, cutting through the trees to get there faster, and finally got to the wooden gate: there was a motorcycle parked in front of the main entrance. A  _purple_ motorcycle.

And before hearing that voice, Yatogami Kuroh already knew with certainty who was living there.

“Hello, Kuro- _chan_ .”

The boy turned around slowly, one hand on the sword hilt, ready to draw.

“Mishakuji Yukari” Kuroh spat out the name with grudge, as the man he once called brother looked at him with nothing short of condescension. “What the hell are you doing here?”

The older man simply shrugged: “Why, Master Ichigen left this house for both of us to use, so we’ve been staying here for a while,” he explained, making his way into the garden, turning his back to Kuroh with nonchalance. He was unarmed and didn’t seem to want to fight him, so Kuroh allowed himself to relax a little bit.

“We?” Kuroh raised an eyebrow, following him into the familiar household. Another figure was lying on the floor of the main room, as Yukari slid the door open: a young boy, little more than a kid, with greyish hair and headphones, in that moment completely focused on playing with his handheld console.

“Oh, right.”

Sukuna Gojo, the other former Green clansman, didn’t seem to notice the two’s arrival as he didn’t move from his position, barely tilting his head in their direction.

“So are you Greens lurking here now?”

“Don’t say ‘lurking’” Yukari complained, before raising his voice to call at the boy on the floor. “Sukuna- _chan_ , we’ve got company!”

The boy barely glanced at Kuroh and turned back to his game, it took a whole five seconds for him to literally jolt up on his feet and point at the newcomer, as if it took him a while to process the information.

“What is  _he_ doing here?” Sukuna screamed as Kuroh readied himself for the worst case scenario.

“He’s free to come and go,” Yukari shrugged, walking towards the kitchen, “this was his home before it was yours. You hungry, Kuro- _chan_ ?”

Home. 

Surely, it was that for a long time, but now when Kuroh thought of “home” the first image that came to mind was the small apartment he’d been living in for the past two years. Once he would have been furious to see his two former enemies treating this place as their own, but what he felt now was simply a slight surprise at the way Yukari was substantially welcoming him in, and acceptance towards their decision to settle there.

Kuroh nodded slowly, setting Kotowari down at the door. Yukari looked pleased at the gesture, before vanishing into the other room.

“Hey! I asked a question!” Sukuna pressed in vain.

“Mind picking up some leeks from the garden, you two?” the older man asked from the kitchen, ignoring the kid’s outcry. Kuroh sighed, as long as the two of them didn’t prove to be dangerous, he decided he’d be playing along. And despite he decided to take this trip to distract himself, among other things, he couldn’t help but think back at home and wonder what were Shiro and Neko doing.

* * *

The funniest thing about Kusanagi Izumo holding a paper garland above his head, an unlit cigarette in his mouth, was that probably he had been coerced in that situation by a group of first-year students. His eyes, as he spotted Shiro and Neko approaching, showed a distinct plea.

“Uhuh, Shiro is making the evil face again…” Neko giggled as the man walked towards the red clansman without showing any intention to help.

“So, what do I owe this visit of yours?” Shiro asked, as he waved at some students who greeted him joyfully. Neko ran, catching up with Tooru, who was painting some piece of scenery for an upcoming play.

“Where the hell you’ve been?” Kusanagi asked, taking Shiro by surprise with the coldness in his voice. “It’s Anna.”

“Anna?!  _Was ist passiert_ ?” Shiro switched to German, preferring not to involve any of the students present in the discussion.

“ _Sie ist im Krankenhaus_ ” Kusanagi replied, “ _seit letzter Nacht_ .” Then he switched back to Japanese: “Weren’t you in town yesterday? Didn’t you see the explosion?”

Honestly, this was news to Shiro, who walked back home on his own soon after he had that argument with Kuroh: “Explosion?”

Kusanagi opened his mouth, then seemed to rethink what he meant to say and asked another question. “Did anything out of norm happened recently? Like, when you came to pick Anna up?”

Shiro carefully kept his expression blank: if Anna didn’t tell her own clansman about the weird phone call deals he wasn’t going to blab about it on her back. And although he considered Kusanagi a friend, he didn’t feel comfortable telling him about the hallucination yet. He didn’t even tell Kuroh, after all.

“I see,” Kusanagi narrowed his eyes, he would have looked pretty intimidating if he wasn’t holding a rainbow paper garland over his head.

“I’ll visit Anna as soon as possible, I appreciate you coming all the way here to help with the-” Shiro’s joke was cut off by Kusanagi before he could finish.

“ _Sie verletzte drei Mädchen ihres Alters._ ”

Shiro paled instantly, pondering the implication of that sentence: “Did she... _Hat sie das gemacht_ ?”

The paper garland suddenly caught on fire at the point Kusanagi was holding it. The man slowly lowered his hands, staring at Shiro in the eyes: “Is this an answer?”

A couple of students shouted outraged and the barman seemed to notice what he’d just done: “Shit, sorry, didn’t mean to do that!” he quickly apologized to the baffled students.

Shiro stared at him, wide eyed and close to shock: “Since  _when_ ?”

Kusanagi used his lighter to light his cigarette, “Since last night. The Sanctum’s unstable and unreliable though, as if we’re all newbies once again, and Scepter 4 hasn’t replied to our requests of answers.”

“It makes no sense…” Shiro pondered with a hand on his chin. “The source of the deviation from causality is gone. Is it even possible for the human brain to generate a feedback loop strong enough to resonate the network preexistent links?”

Kusanagi raised an eyebrow: “You talking to me? Because you lost me at ‘source’, you should talk with Munakata about this, not me. If he’s not going to ignore you like he did with us, hopefully.”

Shiro barely heard those words, lost deep in thought.

“I’m going to visit him later,” he announced in the end, “and visit Anna too, I have to check something out first.” He had to recover his phone from Fushimi first, then visit Anna and figure out what exactly had happened for her to recover and apparently  _lose control_ of her powers, but the nagging need in the back of his head was to immediately rush back to his room and try to figure out how  _in the name of sanity_ was still possible for the Red Clan to have their powers and if it was linked with the hallucinations he had the previous day.

The sun would set soon: he couldn’t possibly be in more than one place at once, he’d have to improvise.

“No, Ameno- _san_ , those are for the play they’re not real, don’t eat them!”

Shiro raised his eyes towards the source of the familiar voice,as he witnessed Hieda holding some papier-mache food props over his head with a panicked expression, while Neko tried to get hold of them with a famished look on her face.

More students were starting to notice the garland that caught on fire, and Kusanagi shrugged: “I’d better get out of here too…” the barman sighed. “Hey, after you’ve gone to the hospital, drop by HOMRA. The one I’ve ordered for you has arrived.”

“Much obliged,” Shiro smiled, sauntering towards Neko and Hieda, under Kusanagi’s curious gaze. “Tooru- _kun_ ,” he called in a singsong tone, “can you do me a favor?”

Tooru Hieda’s panicked expression could only mean he just got caught between the devil and the deep sea, Kusanagi could only give the poor boy a pitiful smile.

* * *

Yata Misaki fell with a loud thud on the other side of the wall fence surrounding the Scepter 4 headquarters, cursing under his breath.

And to think that things were going so well before problems decided to pile up together all of a sudden: between their powers suddenly being back but barely manageable, Anna not waking up and Scepter 4 not answering their requests, the situation was slowly becoming unbearable. He was ordered to stay still, but he couldn’t just wait for others to move while he waited, that was just not his nature. Instead, he decided to sneak into Scepter 4’s headquarters and figure out why Saruhiko suddenly stopped answering his texts and calls.

What if the Blues had the same problems as them? Had something happened to Munakata? As much as he couldn’t stand the former Blue King, Yata found difficult to imagine him losing control of his powers.

HOMRA’s vanguard carefully walked around the building, searching for an ajar door or window to sneak in: he had a vague idea of where Saruhiko’s room was and he was determined to wait for him in there if necessary.

Unfortunately for him, all first-floor entrances were sealed shut. Yata finally opted for a drastic solution as he took off his sweatshirt and wrapped it up around his fist like a glove to break a window. Using the hole to open it from the inside was trickier and he actually ended up with more than a few cuts on his forearm.

“Shit,” he bit his lips to bear with the pain as he landed in the empty corridor, knocking a couple of ornaments to the ground. No biggie, if he wasn’t gonna be caught, and there seemed to be no one around anyway.

As quiet as he could, using the sweatshirt as a temporary bandage to avoid leaving a trail of blood behind and darted through the corridors in the approximate direction of the dorms.

SCEPTER 4’s headquarters was eerily empty and silent, terminals turned off, offices empty: no wonder they weren’t answering their calls, but where were they?

A rustling noise in a nearby room caught him off guard and he nearly screamed, but caught himself on time to hide behind a corner. The rustling noise came back, together with something that sounded like drawers opening and closing. Yata carefully approached the door where the noises came from: it was slightly ajar but from the thin slit it was impossible to see whether there was actually someone inside.

So when the door slammed open, this time Yata couldn’t stop himself from screaming. And the other person, who just came from inside the room, screamed back.

“Wait, you…” Yata stopped screaming when he realized who exactly was in front of him. “You’re that guy, the prev…”

Tooru grimaced. “If you call me ‘the previous Silver King’ too I’m gonna kick you into next week.  _I have a name_ .” He interrupted Yata with an annoyed tone, still embarrassed about his reaction.

“Sorry,” Yata blubbered, “uh, what was your name again?”

“ _Hieda_ .” He hissed, then rubbed tiredly his eyes. “Look, I’ve had a  _long_ day and I need to find the professor’s cellphone so that I can go back to campus, but nobody is here and I have no idea where to look.” He seemed to realize something and stopped. “Wait, you’re with HOMRA, what are you doing here?”

“I wanted to check on Saru, since the idiot doesn’t reply to my emails…” Yata grumbled. “This place has never been so empty, not even the staff is here.”

“I noticed,” Tooru nodded. “The front door was open too…”

Yata had the sudden impulse to bang his head against the wall.  _Of course_ the front door would be open but he  _had_ to go and get injured to get in.

“Wait,” the Red Clan’s vanguard realized. “So, are you telling me the Blues are...gone gone? What the hell happened here?”

Only the echo of their voice answered them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the (eventually) bad German. I don't know the language at all and had to use a translator.


End file.
